Forgiveness and Reconciliation as
Conflict Resolution
Tülin Levitas
Montgomery College
Rockville, MD
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The Cradle of Humanity
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In July 2004, a
Fulbright-Hayes grant
took me to South Africa
for a month. The very
first day that I was in
South Africa, I was
taken to a place at the
outskirts of
Johannesburg called
“The Cradle of
Humanity.”
The South African
Truth and Reconciliation Commission
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The work that the Truth and Reconciliation
Commission has done in South Africa
enabled that country to establish its
democracy and ensure the future of a
unified society.
Apartheid
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Starting with South Africa, we need to look at what the
system of “apartheid” came to. “Apartheid” literally
means apartness, separateness. It was adopted by the
National Party in the early 1940s as a system of
segregation between different racial groups.
South Africa
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Thus the native Africans
became aliens in their own
land. Two separate worlds
lived side by side: the world
of the dominant white
Africaners and that of the
marginalized and oppressed
native black Africans. The
“house of apartheid” was built
on these foundations. As a
reaction to this system of legal
segregation and oppression, a
resistance movement started
to take root in South Africa.
Opposition Movements
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Various movements
within South Africa,
such as the ANC or
PAC were formed in
order to oppose and
end the apartheid
system.
CONCEPTS ON FORGIVENESS:
ACADEMIC TEXTS USED
PEACE & JUSTICE
STUDIES COMMUNITY
Presented September 25, 2012
John E. Daniel, Student
Montgomery College-Rockville
Faculty Sponsor: Tülin Levitas, Professor, Montgomery
College-Rockville
Course Description
Introduce students to the concept of forgiveness as it
has been applied by the Truth and Reconciliation
Commission in South Africa; explore the sources of the
concept—its Judeo-Christian roots and South African
roots of Ubuntu; address whether the Commission’s
work did lead to justice; identify necessary and
sufficient conditions entailed within different concepts
of “justice”; and investigate relationship between
concepts of amnesty, justice, and accountability.
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Background Texts from Prior
Classes
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Desmond Tutu, No Future Without Forgiveness. New York:
Doubleday, 1999. 294 pp.
Pumula Gobodo-Madikizela, A Human Being Died That Night.
New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2003. 193 pp.
Dalai Lama and Victor Chan, The Wisdom of Forgiveness.
New York: Riverhead Books, 2004. 266 pp.
Between Vengeance and Forgiveness:
Facing History after Genocide and Mass Violence
By Martha Minow.
Boston: Beacon Press, 1998.
214 pp.
 Harvard Law School, Dean
 J.D., Yale Law School
 Ed.M, Harvard Grad.
School of Education
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Between Vengeance and Forgiveness
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Minow examines process of rebuilding lives
and society in the aftermath of atrocity
Scrutinizes social and historic roots of
genocide and mass violence
Recognizes any process will be inadequate
Silence is not acceptable
Challenge is to negotiate path securing
justice for victims and rebuilding a society
Minow: Truth Commissions
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Studies strategies of national experiments in justice
and healing
Makes convincing case for restorative power of
speaking about trauma
Central task of truth commissions is to write a history
of a nation’s troubled past
Obviously favors South African model-TRC
Primary focus is restoring dignity to victims
Facing past, rather than attempting to forget
Ubuntu: An Ethic for a New
South Africa
By Augustine Shutte.
Pietermaritzburg, South
Africa: Cluster Publications,
2001. 228 pp.
 University of Cape Town,
Professor of Philosophy
 M.A., Oxford University
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Bringing South Africa Together
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Bring together what apartheid kept apart
New ethic mirrors European ideas: freedom,
individual power of free choice
Persons exist only in relation to other persons
Ubuntu: A person is a person through persons
Spirit of Ubuntu helping dissipate the spirit of
apartheid
African philosophy: I am because we are
Manifested in forgiveness in TRC hearings
Ubuntu at Montgomery College
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In her Inaugural Address on October 29, 2010,
President DeRionne Pollard expressed her own
version of Ubuntu when she thanked her mentors
and family:
“The best of me is
a reflection of you.”
–
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Forgiveness:
A Philosophical Approach
By Charles L. Griswold.
Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2007.
242 pp.
 Boston University:
Professor of Philosophy
 Ph.D., Penn. State Univ.
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Forgiveness at Its Best
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Ethical response to injury and the injurer
Sees a moral demand to forgive
Not required to forswear resentment, only to
moderate it and forswear revenge
Both parties must satisfy certain conditions to qualify
for paradigm case of dyadic forgiveness – Six
criteria:
Offender: 1 - Repudiate one’s prior actions
2 – Express regret
Forgiveness at Its Best
(cont’d)
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3 – Commit to be a better person
4 – Understand nature of harm from the injured
party’s perspective
5 – Offer narrative account of how she came to do
the wrong and is now worthy of approbation, and
Victim: 6 – Forswear revenge; moderate, and
commit to eventually let go of, resentment
altogether; express declaration that forgiveness is
granted
Making Amends: Atonement in
Morality, Law and Politics
By Linda Radzik. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2009.
239 pp.
 Texas A&M University,
Assoc. Professor of Philosophy
 Ph.D., and M.A. in
Philosophy, U. of Arizona
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An Ethic for Wrongdoers
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Approaches question of atonement from the
wrongdoer’s point of view
Wrong sends message that wrongdoer is worth more
that the victim
Explores responses that wrongdoers should make to
their own misdeeds
Responses can be apology, repentance, reparations,
and self-punishment
Offers wrongdoers opportunity to earn redemption
within the moral community
An Ethic for Wrongdoers
(cont’d)
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Emphasizes rebuilding respect and trust among
victims, communities and wrongdoers
Views atonement as repaying a moral debt
Unlike Griswold, Radzik argues that should a victim
wrongfully refuse to reconcile after wrongdoer’s
thoroughgoing atonement, wrongdoer may consider
herself redeemed
Radzik says the victim may need to hold onto
resentment out of self-respect or sense of justice
Conclusion
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Wrongdoing and suffering wrong are all too common
occurrences today
Society’s needs to face events of genocide, mass
violence and forceful conflict raise questions of how
we ought to respond to them
Seeking forgiveness, making amends, pursuing
redemption are all worthy paths to take
Our authors have given us the conceptual tools to
begin to address these complex topics